Communication apprehension and reactions to proxemic violations

An experiment was designed to examine the role of a person's predispositions toward communication in reactions to violations of proxemic expectations. Working with Burgoon's (1983) violations of nonverbal expectations model, Buller and Burgoon (1986) predicted that predispositions may bias evaluations of initiator reward and violation valence. Apprehensive individuals should unfavorably evaluate the initiator, negatively valence a violation and comply less, while nonapprehensive individuals should favorably evaluate the initiator, positively valence a violation, and comply more. Alternately, this paper proposes that predispositions may affect arousal-induction rather than initiator evaluation and violation valencing. Following Patterson (1983), apprehensives should experience more arousal and comply more to reduce the arousal, whereas nonapprehensives should experience less arousal and comply less. Four initiators engaged 90 subjects in experimental conversations which ended with a request for the subjects' signature on a petition. Initiators either remained at the normative distance, moved one seat closer, or moved one seat farther from the subject. Results showed that apprehensives and subjects experiencing close violations complied more, suggesting that communication apprehension influences arousal-induction. Communication apprehension had no main effect on perceptions of initiator attractiveness and similarity, implying that arousal not perceptions of the initiator is affected by predispositions toward communication. Initiator gender again emerged as an important characteristic which influences a subject's perceptions of initiator reward.     

视觉现代化——现代艺术背后的人类视觉观念(1)

20世纪初所发生的“视觉现代化”(modernising vision)转向源于自19世纪以来传统的视觉概念所发生的深刻变化。它旨在将人们从过时的观看习惯中解放出来,视觉的本质不应主要被理解为给定可见世界的机械再现模式,而应该从根本上被理解为由文化构造的、具有历史多样性的感知数据的生产性过程。现代艺术试图通过艺术品本身来创造一种现代化的视觉形式,艺术作品被定义为实现视觉现代化的手段或工具,画家试图用艺术来表达一种新的视觉观——观看中充斥着时间的流动,而绝不仅是一个明确的视觉顺序的实现;观看不是一个视觉固定化过程,而是更加有意识地、集中地观察世界。从丢勒式的空间中心透视观到塞尚式的时间和空间相结合的多重透视观,后者更加强调了观者的参与和观看的过程,这种观看方式的变化也是人与世界关系的变化。视觉现代化的探讨在今天仍然具有重要的意义⁽²⁾。     

Recent trends in the process of stratification

Using the 14 annual cross-sections from the General Social Survey, we specify a "basic model" of attainment and describe the year-by-year fluctuations in its parameters. The results are partially consistent with theories describing the gradual growth of universalistic patterns of stratification and mobility. Under a linear model of educational achievement, we find that the direct effects of race are weakening and the returns to class-based advantages are declining in tandem. The contours of the socioeconomic "gender gap" are also changing in important ways, with the male intercept declining at a rapid pace and the female term registering small and insignificant year-by-year gains. At the same time, the returns to experience and schooling are increasing for men, whereas the corresponding returns for women have remained stable over the 15-year period. This pattern of interaction effects implies that the size of the gender gap varies over time and across different population groups.     

Basic aspects of evolution strategies

Evolution strategies (ESs) are a special class of probabilistic, direct, global optimization methods. They are similar to genetic algorithms but work in continuous spaces and have the additional capability of self-adapting their major strategy parameters. This paper presents the most important features of ESs, namely their self-adaptation, as well as their robustness and potential for parallelization which they share with other evolutionary algorithms.Besides the early (1 + 1)-ES and its underlying theoretical results, the modern ( + )-ES and (, )-ES are presented with special emphasis on the self-adaptation of strategy parameters, a mechanism which enables the algorithm to evolve not only the object variables but also the characteristics of the probability distributions of normally distributed mutations. The self-adaptation property of the algorithm is also illustrated by an experimental example.The robustness of ESs is demonstrated for noisy fitness evaluations and by its application to discrete optimization problems, namely the travelling salesman problem (TSP).Finally, the paper concludes by summarizing existing work and general possibilities regarding the parallelization of evolution strategies and evolutionary algorithms in general.     

Ropes course training for youth in a rural setting: “At first I thought it was going to be boring ...”

Outdoor structured activities, such as Ropes Challenge Courses, are typically utilized as interventions for youth coming from urban settings. Evaluation of such programs is scanty at best. In this instance, the course experience is used as a prevention tool for high risk youth in a remote, rural setting of high unemployment, alcohol problems, and low income. The authors discuss the effectiveness of this approach, and the intended and unintended consequences for the rural community at large. The evaluation design relies on extensive qualitative methodology as well as quantitative methods to capture the unique nature of this rural project.     

Is There a Forest Transition? Deforestation,Reforestation, and Development1

Abstract Environmental social scientists have recently begun to use the term 'forest transition' to describe how forest cover changes as economic development occurs in nations. The hypothesized transition occurs as follows. An initial surge in economic activity in impoverished societies spurs deforestation, but as economic activity continues to intensify and cities grow larger, a 'turnaround' occurs, and deforestation gives way to reforestation. This paper uses cross-national data from five successive surveys of world forest resources to assess this empirical claim. A turnaround in forest cover trends does occur in a significant number of nations. The paper also evaluates two explanations for the turnaround, a wood scarcity hypothesis derived from microeconomic theory and an industrialization hypothesis linked to central place theory. It finds period specific support for the industrialization hypothesis. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of these findings for proposals to alleviate the biodiversity crisis through programs of reforestation.     

Power, Politics, and the Framing of Environmental Illness

The medical community, along with other government agencies, has created its own frame of environmental illness. This frame has been generally accepted by the American public. In this paper we discuss framing in general and the factors related to how the environmental illness frame has been constructed and maintained. We offer a brief history of the medical institution and illustrate the frame with its definitions of environmental illness. Qualitative data from a study of Oak Ridge, a contaminated community located in Tennessee, are examined to analyze the consequences of challenging the environmental illness frame. Implications for future research are discussed.